Record-breaking Ingenuity lives on

Sent to fly only five times as a technology demonstrator, NASA’s next-generation “Ingenuity” helicopter is now preparing for its 29^th flight above the Martian land, over a year after it was launched to Mars. The rotorcraft was created to prove that it could fly in the Red Planet’s unusual atmosphere, and its ongoing – and unexpected – success has shown that the helicopter performs better than the team could ever have imagined.

In 2021, Australian Aviation introduced you to the incredibly complex helicopter, and now, let’s take a look at what these past 12 months have looked like for Ingenuity.

Recap: Who is Ingenuity?

NASA doesn’t do anything by accident or chance, especially when it comes to naming a mission or spacecraft. The name Ingenuity was chosen by a high school student in Alabama, who actually submitted the name for Perseverance, but NASA decided to use it for the helicopter “given how much creative thinking the team employed to get the mission off the ground,” the space agency said. “The ingenuity and brilliance of people working hard to overcome the challenges of interplanetary travel are what allow us all to experience the wonders of space exploration,” the student wrote. “Ingenuity is what allows people to accomplish amazing things.”

Ingenuity has a large team backing its operations, and the resulting helicopter came from six years of manufacturing and testing. Ingenuity’s first successful flight test on Mars took place on 19 April at 10:46am UTC; the very first time that a powered aircraft had taken flight on another planet. In less than a month after lifting off for the first time from the Martian land, on 7 May, Ingenuity had completed all expected five flights. Its mission was supposed to end there, but little did the team know that Ingenuity was just getting started.

The helicopter is a remotely-operated autonomous solar-powered rotorcraft, operating with twin propellers, four legs under its metallic body which carries sensors and cameras to guide Ingenuity in its quest on Mars and to gather data. For its flight, pilots at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) plan routines and then send the commands to its buddy on the Red Planet, the Perseverance rover, which then relays the information to the helicopter to guide its steps. Ingenuity receives these commands via its radio antennas, and performs exactly what it is told, albeit any malfunctions. Ingenuity’s take-off and landing area on the Jezero Crater is named the Wright Brothers Field, as a tribute to the men who flew the first aircraft in 1903.

The helicopter weighs 1.8 kilograms on Earth, but measures just 680 grams on Mars, and is able to fly up to five metres high and has a range of up to 300 meters per flight. At its head, Ingenuity holds a solar panel, which charges its Lithium-ion batteries, giving it enough energy to perform one 90-second flight per Martian day. Below that are its four-foot-long rotors, constructed of carbon fibre foam, which allow it to lift in the thin Martian air. Its rotors spin at higher speeds than would be required on Earth in order to generate lift.

Then comes Ingenuity’s cube-shaped body, which holds its avionics, batteries and cameras. This cube contains the rotorcraft’s computer systems, which had to be purpose-built to be small and light enough for Ingenuity to take flight on the Red Planet. Ingenuity’s body contains insulation and heaters to keep its computer and sensor systems warm enough to brave the cold Martian nights. The body also holds Ingenuity’s camera and sensors, which record how fast and far the helicopter is travelling, and in which direction. Its cameras can also capture black and white photos, to send back to Earth.

Ingenuity highlights

Ingenuity is not alone during its time on Mars, as it has been accompanied with NASA’s Perseverance rover, both working together to scout the Martian land. Since landing on Mars, the two vehicles have been tasked to study the Jezero crater, which is a 45-kilometre-long stretch of land on the Red Planet located on the Western edge of a flat plain called Isidis Planitia, which is north of the Martian equator. It was chosen as a landing site for Perseverance and Ingenuity as it is believed to have once been flooded with water, home to an ancient river delta (where the two are currently exploring).

So far, Ingenuity has flown a total of 6,909 meters, it has reached an altitude of 12 meters, broken its fastest ground speed at 5.50 meters per second, and has been in the air for a total of 54.2 minutes. On Ingenuity’s 10^th flight, on 24 July, the helicopter broke a record of flying at an altitude of 12 meters, and since then has only reached that height twice more in August and November. During its 11^th flight, on 4 August, Ingenuity snapped multiple photographs of the boulders and sand dunes of the South Seitah region of the Jezero Crater, and also a few surprising images of Perseverance from up above.

In December, for Ingenuity’s 17^th flight, the helicopter broke another record by pushing past its total flight time past the 30-minute mark, surpassing the team’s original flight expectations of Ingenuity. Then, on Ingenuity’s 26^th flight on 19 April, Ingenuity captured an image of Perseverance’s back shell and parachute that protected the rover during its descent towards the Martian land in February, 2021. Engineers working on the Mars Sample Return program, which is focused on sending rocks and regolith Perseverance has collected back to Earth, requested the images to study how they performed during the rover’s entry, descent and landing.

Mishaps along the way

As expected, Ingenuity was bound to face some trouble along the way during its time on the Red Planet, but surprisingly, mishaps haven’t occurred that often. A month after its first flight in April, a minute into its sixth test flight when it was at an altitude of 10 meters high, one of the photographs the rotorcraft took did not register properly in its system, throwing the helicopter off its course entirely. Ingenuity began to tilt back and forward about 20 degrees and experienced power consumption spikes. However, a built-in system helped the helicopter switch back into gear and land safely about five meters from its intended touchdown zone.

Then, on 5 May 2022, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory lost contact with Ingenuity, as it suffered a communications glitch. The helicopter was scheduled for a call with JPL but missed it, and engineers suggested it may have entered a low power state due to high levels of dust in the atmosphere and low local temperatures, meaning Ingenuity struggled to communicate with its ground operators. Dust has – and will – remained the common threat in Ingenuity’s lifespan on the Martian land, as it makes it difficult for its batteries to maintain its heaters overnight, especially as it enters into the cooler winter nights.

On 6 June, Ingenuity’s Chief Pilot Havard Grip wrote a blog about the cold conditions the helicopter will endure during the Jezero Crater winter. Grip said it has become “increasingly challenging” to keep Ingenuity going, as it was initially designed for a short-flight test campaign during the Martian spring, not the freezing winter months. “Increased amounts of dust in the atmosphere, combined with lower daytime temperatures and shorter days, have impacted Ingenuity’s energy budget to the point where it is unable to keep itself warm throughout the Martian nights,” Grip said.

Ingenuity will undertake a new winter operations paradigm, by shutting down during the night, reducing its internal temperature and letting its onboard electronics reset. This will hopefully help Ingenuity push through for the next few months.

Its record-breaking 25^th flight

When the Wright brothers completed their first successful flight on an airplane in 1903, travelling the skies above another planet probably didn’t cross their minds. It is a completely different ball game, but that is where we are now. Ingenuity’s 25^th flight broke through every previous expectation the world’s top scientists had of what man-made technology could achieve. On 8 April, Ingenuity flew a distance of 2,310 feet at a speed of 5.5 meters per seconds – also marking it the longest and fastest flight for Ingenuity to date.

“For our record-breaking flight, Ingenuity’s downward-looking navigation camera provided us with a breathtaking sense of what it would feel like gliding 33 feet above the surface of Mars at 12 miles per hour,” said Ingenuity team lead Teddy Tzanetos of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The future

Ingenuity’s future is bright, which was made clear when NASA extended its mission last September for an additional 12 months. Plus, the announcement came on the heels of the helicopter’s 21^st successful flight. During its next stages of life, Ingenuity will continue helping Perseverance in its second science campaign which is focused on studying the ancient river delta, beginning on 13 April 2022. NASA says the delta is a huge fan-shaped collection of rocks and sediment at the western edge of the Jezero Crater. Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said it promises to be a “veritable geologic feast” and one of the best places to look for signs of past microscopic life.

Now that NASA has achieved the unimaginable, by flying a small helicopter on another planet from 211.56 million kilometers away, who knows what the best scientists and engineers will do next?

Images and videos courtesy of NASA.